"...keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Correction to Last Insight -- Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, sold his first company to Microsoft for $265 million, not $256! And Tony is also giving away one signed advanced copy per day from now until the book is launched on June 7th. Interested readers can sign up at www.deliveringhappinessbook.com.
Capitol Lighting Quarterly Theme Video -- it's that time of the year to be planning for your next quarterly theme (April 1 start for most companies). What are your top 3 - 5 priorities for the quarter and how are you going to communicate them? Capitol Lighting, with 9 retail lighting stores in New Jersey and Florida, produced a 3 minute video to highlight their "A New Dawn" theme, core values, and five priorities.
Navigating Choppy Waters -- notes Ken Lebersfeld, co-owner of this 4th generation business with his brother and two cousins, "we have been seriously impacted by the housing downturn and have navigated our way through some pretty choppy waters. We have made more changes in the last 10 months then in the prior 10 years." This is their first quarterly theme, unveiling the results of their One-Page Strategic Plan.
Keller Sports GbR Sets 90-Day Goals -- another newbie to Rockefeller Habits, Jakob Keller, Managing Partner of Munich-based Keller Sports, noted "after having heard you in Munich (Feb 9), we've implemented the first two 'tools" in our company. First we set up a meeting plan including daily, weekly, and monthly meetings. Second, we set up 90-day goals." Results since launching March 1:
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We have had about 250 daily meetings since we started and it has only happened twice that someone showed up a couple of minutes late as they are eager to be able to let me know what's up and to share their "where I am stuck -- question."
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A couple of our employees told us that they wanted to use their holidays, for the days they hadn't been to work due to illness, so they could keep on fighting for the 90 day goals.
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Employees simply say that they feel much better with the new structures and they now know what they work for specifically.
Get More DONE -- continues Jakob "In terms of performance measurements it might be a little too early as we started on March 1st, but until now I can say that we get more DONE instead of trying to get done many things at the same time -- the feeling of getting something done is something each employee needs as a reward...and the employees are happier and much more motivated than they had been before."
Learn Fast -- Act Fast -- concludes Jakob "next we are going to implement a 'distinct customer feedback' process for every employee of the company (including myself). I am positive this is going to give us great value."
Tom Peters Interview -- and as a follow-up to my review of Tom's new book The Little Big Things, John Cousineau, President of sales-productivity software company Amacus pointed me to David Meerman Scott's 12 minute interview of Tom about the new book. Particularly watch the one minute segment starting at 3:25 (David provides the time coded segments) where he delineates what has and hasn't changed in business the last 30 years.
Interesting Mind-Stretching Stuff -- one of Tom's 163 ideas is to continue to stretch your mind with interesting stuff, so I'm going to add a section to my weekly insights that hopefully does just that for you. My first one is about a "Cheap Portable Wound Healing Device" an MIT grad student developed and is testing in Haiti.